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THE USE OF PEER - ASSESSMENT OF READING ALOUD TO IMPROVE THE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT STUDENTS’ MOTIVATION ON PRONUNCIATION
CLASS OF STKIP PGRI TRENGGALEK
Yudi Basuki STKIP PGRI Trenggalek Email: [email protected] Jl. Supriyadi 22 KP. 66319 Trenggalek
Abstrak: Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk meningkatkan motivasi mahasiswa di kelas pronunciation (pelafalan kata dalam bahasa Inggris) melalui strategi penilaian teman sejawat dalam menilai kemampuan pelafalan melalui membaca nyaring. Telah terbukti bahwa penguasaan pronunciation mahasiswa semester satu STKIP PGRI Trenggalek masih kurang dan masih sering terdapat kesalahan pelafalan. Kondisi ini disebabkan oleh mayoritas dari mahasiswa tidak termotivasi untuk belajar pronunciation. Penelitian ini merupakan Penelitian Tindakan Kelas yang terdiri dari empat tahap dalam satu siklus. Tahap perencanaan dilakukan dengan cermat untuk mendapat hasil maksimal dan mencapai kriteria kesuksesan. Subyek penelitian adalah mahasiswa semester satu STKIP PGRI Trenggalek yang berjumlah 24 orang.
Metode pengumpulan data diperoleh dari catatan penilaian lapangan dan kwesener. Sementara itu, hasil penelitian dalam satu siklus membuktikan bahwa strategi penilaian teman sejawat melalui membaca nyaring memberikan peningkatan yang signifikan pada motivasi mahasiswa dalam belajar pronunciation. Mayoritas mahasiswa menunjukkan adanya perilaku termotivasi selama strategi dilakukan. Hal ini juga memberikan efek yang baik dari dalam diri mahasiswa untuk mendorong mereka agar termotivasi mempelajari pronunciation dengan lebih baik.
Kata Kunci : penilaian teman sejawat, membaca nyaring, motivasi, pelafalan
Abstract: This study is aimed at improving the students’ motivation on pronunciation class through the use of peer-assessment of reading aloud strategy. It was proved that the first semester students’ mastery on pronunciation of STKIP PGRI Trenggalek was not good enough. This condition was mainly caused by the students’ motivation on learning pronunciation. Most of them were not eager to study pronunciation. This study, however, was a Classroom Action Research that consisted of four phases in one cycle. The planning phase was done so thoroughly to get the maximum result and achieve the criteria of success.
Subjects of the study were 24 students of the English department on the first semester of STKIP PGRI Trenggalek. Data collection methods of this study were obtained from field notes and questionnaires. Research findings in one cycle proved that the use of peer- assessment of reading aloud gave a significant improvement on the students’ motivation toward pronunciation class. Most of the students indicated motivated performances during the implementation of peer-assessment of reading aloud. It gave a good washback as well. The effect of peer-assessment of reading aloud in such that way led the students to be intrinsically motivated to study pronunciation better.
Key Words: peer-assessment, reading aloud, motivation, pronunciation
INTRODUCTION
It is noteworthy that the only general form of linguistic communication among human race is speech that is due to
have a good pronunciation. But as a matter of fact, although English pronunciation seems like an easy thing for native speakers, but for nonnative, it can be quite
hard to master. Kelly (2000:11) stated that pronunciation is the key of speaking. In a nutshell, through the pronunciation mastery, one’s speaking will be fluent, other people will be easy to understand it, or in the other word, people will not understand when the speaker pronounces incorrectly. People who consistently mispronounce a range of phonemes can be extremely difficult for a speaker from another language community to understand.
This can be very frustrating for them although they have a good command of grammar and lexis but have difficulty in understanding and being understood by a native speaker (Kelly, 2000:11).
As the important of pronunciation to a better communication, unfortunately, there was a problem faced by the first semester students of English department of STKIP PGRI Trenggalek; nearly all students made mistakes pronouncing words in English. This condition was mainly caused by the students’ motivation on learning pronunciation. Most of them were not eager to study pronunciation. They spoke to themselves and to their friends, did texting, browsing, joking, and it was too far away from motivated performance of language learners. In response to theseproblems, it is important to increase the quality of teaching pronunciation.
Hence, teachers should be able to make the teaching and learning process of
pronunciation more various, challenging, and interesting.
Meanwhile, peer-assessment of reading aloud may be a solution to motivation problems with pronunciation since it may offer many advantages.
Bydoing peer-assessment among students, it may motivate the students to study how to pronounce words correctly. If not, they psychologically may get ashamed. Students may also give corrections to other students’
reading aloud performances based on their prior knowledge on pronunciation (giving stimulus and response or feedback).
Further, the beneficial research finding on peer-assessment shows that peer- assessment provides students with the opportunity to take responsibility for analyzing, monitoring and evaluating aspects of both the learning process and product of their peers as well as themselves (Somervell, 1993 in Saito, 2008).
Further, it sounds as if listening, by selecting appropriate and attractive texts to be read out aloud such as poetries, attractive short stories, tongue twisters and minimal pairs, chants, lyrics, quotations, poems, etc. it may lead the students to have eagerness to read and practice their pronunciation. Besides, reading texts aloud also gives chances for students to study the links between spelling and pronunciation, stress and intonation, the linking sounds
between words in connected speech in line with the fun and interesting texts provided.
In addition, the use of peer- assessment is also in line with the current issue of today English pedagogy that moves English pedagogy from teacher center- based teaching to student center-based teaching. Considering the background descriptions above, the researcher is interested inconducting a classroom action research focusing on improving motivation of the English department students of STKIP PGRI Trenggalek in pronunciation class through peer-assessment of reading texts aloud.
In accordance with it, statement of the problems of this study is how can the peer-assessment of reading aloud be developed to improve the English department students’ motivation in pronunciation class of STKIP PGRI Trenggalek.
Most importantly, this studyaims at describing the way how the peer- assessment of reading aloud to be developed to improve the English department students’ motivation on pronunciation class of STKIP PGRI Trenggalek.
Then, the scope and limitation of this study is limited on the teaching and learning of pronunciation by using peer- assessment of reading aloud, its developments on peer-assessment
techniques (pair, group, and classical peer- assessment activities) and the selections of reading texts (poetries, attractive short stories, tongue twisters and minimal pairs, chants, lyrics, news, poems, etc.). It is also limited on the subject of study that is the first semester of the English department students of STKIP PGRI Trenggalek in the 2015/2016 academic year.
This study, however, is expected to be useful for people especially in educational settings, in teaching and learning pronunciation, and to give special contributions for students, English teachers, and further researchers. For students, they will be motivated and get much better improvement on their pronunciation by having self-regulated learning and being accustomed to practice by themselves and with their peers. Meanwhile, for English teachers, this study can be useful for them to motivate their students to study better and enrich their knowledge on the use of various strategies in teaching pronunciation and improve their students’ pronunciation mastery. For next researchers, then, they may take the findings of this study as one of their references in conducting their further researches on improving the students’
pronunciation through other strategies, such as phonetic transcription, minimal pairs, drilling, singing English songs, etc. that is prior to the students’ motivation.
Getting to know motivation according to some experts, that it is the basic extent of the effort an individual is willing to exert the goal of a learning a language because of desire to do so and of favorable attitude toward such language (Gardner as cited by Noels et al. in Dina, 2005). Further, from the behaviouristic perspective, motivation is quite simply the anticipation of reward (Brown, 2004:160).
However, the cognitivists view the term motivation as being more related to the learner's decisions as Keller (1983:389), quoted by Brown (ibid:160), states the choices people make as to what experiences or goals they will approach or avoid, and the degree of effort they exert in that respect. However, in the constructivists' definition of motivation, they place further emphasis on social contexts as well as the individual's decisions. Thus, motivation is very hard to define. It can be simply defined as “like to learn such language”
interested to do favorable attitudes toward such language. One can be called motivated if she or he enjoys learning a language, whatever factors influencing his/her likes finally he or she shows favorable attitude and will to exert the goal of learning a language.
Then, the issue of motivation, particularly in EFL settings, is so important that other considerations about teaching methodology seem to pale in comparison. It
is important to think about motivation as the essence of language teaching because of the obvious realities of learning English for most language learners. All of the conditions that we know contribute to successful second language acquisition are lacking in most EFL contexts, such in the setting of this study (STKIP PGRI Trenggalek); there is not just enough English input in the environment, there are not probably enough opportunities for interaction with English speakers, there are not usually enough strong role models promoting the learning of English, and there may not be widespread enough social acceptance for the idea of becoming proficient in English. Because of these adverse conditions, a learner has to have extraordinary motivation in order to succeed at learning English.
Summing up, attitudes or performances of motivated learners toward such a language as stated by Dornyei (2001:43) can be drawn obviously in the following table:
Table 1.
The Performances of Motivated Language Learners
No Performances
1 Respecting to language acquisition 2 Making effort to exert the goal of a
learning language
3 Willing to sustain activities to acquire language
4 Trying to pursue activities to acquire language
5 Connecting favorable feeling to activities to acquire language
Henceforth, the section of pronunciation covers some parts of pronunciation. There are many linguists try to define pronunciation. Nasr (1980:177) defined pronunciation as the way in which (a particular) language is pronounced; a particular person’s way of pronouncing language; the way in which a word is usually pronounced. In addition, pronunciation is the way in which a language or a particular word or sound is spoken (Hornby, 2003:331). Furthermore, pronunciation is act or result of producing the sounds of speech, including articulation, vowel formation, accent, and inflection, often with reference to some standard correctness or acceptability (Webster, 1989:1152). Accordingly, pronunciation is related to oral production language, the component of speaking and the key of speaking as well. With the pronunciation mastery, one’s speaking will be fluent, other people will be easy to understand it, or in another word, the people will not understand when the speaker pronounces incorrectly. Thus, the mastery of main features of pronunciation is highly demanded to those who study English as a means of communication especially oral communication. Pronunciation error such mispronouncing phoneme and or stress and intonation leads to unsuccessful oral communication although the mastery of lexis and grammar has been acquired.
To explain further, Kelly (2000:13) stated that there are two key problems with pronunciation teaching. Firstly, it tends to be neglected. And the secondly, when it is not neglected, it tends to be reactive to a particular problem that has arisen in the class room rather than being strategically planned. Henceforth, Dixson (1963:07) states teaching English pronunciation is both a simple and complicated procedure. It is simple in that such teaching involves merely the drilling of students on the various sounds of English. Any conscientious teacher, who herself has good pronunciation, can do this. She offers herself as a model of good pronunciation, correct as best as she can with any error the students made.
Accordingly, teaching pronunciation is both simple and complicated for teachers at school. Kelly (2000:12) stated that teachers tend to be reluctant to teach pronunciation. Basically, teaching pronunciation mostly includes the activity of reception and production. The teacher should keep in mind at all times, of course, that ear training as receptive activity is extremely important in the teaching of any foreign language. Drill on proper articulation of sounds is necessary, but ear training is even more fundamental. A student must first hear a sound clearly before he or she can reproduce it.
Consequently, all pronunciation repetition
should be continued over as long a period of time as possible.
In accordance with it, Kelly (2000:15) gave some strategies, techniques and activities that can be done in order to achieve the teaching pronunciation goals, such as drilling. Drilling is one of main ways in which pronunciation is practiced in the classroom. Then, reading aloud is a classroom activity which has fallen in and out of favor with teachers at various times.
The main argument against it is that it can interfere with successful pronunciation;
spelling can clearly affect pronunciation adversely. Such reading texts as poems, rhymes, extracts from plays, song lyric etc.
can be useful to teach pronunciation.
Broadly speaking, it is sure that those teaching pronunciation strategies are beneficial for teachers to apply on their pronunciation classes. But in applying those strategies, teachers should consider what, who, where, and how students are. The better way to apply strategy of teaching pronunciation is done in response to error which students make in the classroom. The teachers of pronunciation, of course, need a good grounding in theoretical knowledge, practical classroom skill, and access to good idea for classroom activities.
Teaching pronunciation should be strategically planned and teachers should regard features of pronunciation as integral
to language analysis and their lesson planning.
Henceforth,peer assessment or peer evaluation can mean many things. Topping (1998: 250) as quoted by Cheng and Warren (2005) defined peer-assessment as an arrangement in which individuals consider the amount, level, value, worth, quality of success of the products or outcome of learning of peers of similar status. In the field of first language pedagogy, Matsuno (2009) quotes some research result concerning with peer- assessment as follows; peer-assessment has also been considered as an effective tool in both group and individual projects. Peer assessment has been found to help teachers assess each person’s effort in group projects (Conway &Kember, 1993; Goldfinch, 1994; Goldfinch &Raeside, 1990) and to help students learn more and work cooperatively in a group (Kwan & Leung, 1996). In individual tasks, students can be more involved in assessment and instruction, which leads to greater satisfaction with the class (Sluijsmans, Brand- Gruwel & Marriënboer, 2002).
With regard to those peer- assessment definitions, the peer-assessment in this study could be best defined as an activity to allow team members to assess other members of the team by considering the amount, level, value, worth, quality of success of the products or outcome of
learning including giving response or feedback to others’ performances as well as themselves whether in pairs, small groups, or whole team members. Thus, peer assessment is believable to develop students’ higher order reasoning and higher level cognitive thought (taking responsibility for analyzing, monitoring and evaluating aspects of both the learning process and product of their peers), enhance relevant skills and interpersonal relationships between learner groups as a socializing force, encourage reflective learning through observing others’
performances and become aware of performance criteria, generate positive reactions as a sense of shared responsibility among students.In other words, it provides learners with the opportunity to take responsibility for analyzing, monitoring and evaluating aspects of both the learning process and product of their peers.
In dealing with reading aloud, according to Grabe (2007:307), read-aloud is one of performance reading of type of reading-fluency practices that can involve the radio-reading practice noted earlier as well as the “say it like the character”
reading-practice activity. Accordingly, reading aloud can be simply defined as reading printed texts loudly. It is not silent reading; it is oral reading, reading with sound comes out from the mouth. In this study researcher does not explore reading
as the main topic being discussed, but it is already limited on reading aloud as the way how to read texts and in connection with production of sound (pronunciation) as the part of reading itself.
To explain further, in a great many classrooms the reading lesson is used as an opportunity to teach pronunciation, encourage fluent and expressive speaking and so on. For early readers, reading aloud is of course an important aid; beginners have to discover how writing is associated with the spoken words they have already learned to use (Nuttal, 1982:02). It is in line with Kelly (2000:22) who argued that reading aloud is classroom activity that usually happens to offer opportunities for the study of the links between spelling and pronunciation, of stress and intonation, and the linking of sound between words in connected speech; all of these can be highlighted and investigated further in fun and interesting ways through reading aloud.
Then, Madsen, (1983:66) said that one of the most common ways of checking pronunciation is to have students read something aloud. Despite this limitation, reading aloud is rather popular way to test the pronunciation of students who can read English. Similarly Brown (2007:371) asserted that reading aloud (oral reading) is one of classroom reading performance that can serve as an evaluative check on bottom- up processing skills; double as a
pronunciation check; and serve to add some extra student participation if the teachers want to highlight a certain short segment of a reading passage.
In short, it is true that reading aloud is closely related to and always involved in every pronunciation practices. How can teachers of pronunciation teach pronunciation of words or how can they assess students’ pronunciation performance for certain feature of pronunciation (minimal pairs, homophones, homograph, intonation etc.) without any helps of medium printed texts to be read out aloud.
Moreover, pronunciation also aims at having successful understanding in differentiating the system of writing and pronouncing English words.
In a nutshell, the process of conducting peer-assessment on reading aloud is based on the peer-assessment development activities. Peer-assessment can be done in pairs (two persons), small groups (five up to ten persons), or larger groups (ten persons, class orientation or more) in similar status. In classroom teaching and learning activity, the process of peer-assessment on reading aloud is simply begun by selecting texts to be read aloud (short stories, poetries, chants, minimal pairs etc.), learning purposes (motivating, comprehending, testing etc.), and peering activities (in pair, small/large group). Soon as those activities are done,
the process of peer-assessment is continued with distributing texts and peering all members’ reading aloud performance as well as themselves by taking turn one by one. As the targeted objective is achieved the process of peer-assessment on reading aloud is finished.
RESEARCH METHOD
In this research, the researcher conducted a Classroom Action Research design. This research is a research design that is especially conducted to elevate practical quality of teaching in class (Latief, 2010:81). Thus, classroom action research begins with a problem or a question about classroom experiences, issues, or challenges. It is a reflective process which helps teachers also researchers to explore and examine aspects of teaching and learning and to take action to change and improve. In line with this study, the basic purpose of this research design is to describe how the development of peer- assessment on reading aloud to improve the motivation of the English department students on pronunciation class.
To explain further, the action research begins after the existing problems found and defined in the preliminary study.
The second step is planning. This step is to solve the problems and preparing the actions to do. The next step is implementing; doing the action based on
the planning and the preparation made in the previous phase. Observation occurs at the same time as implementation of the action to know the effects of implemented action and to collect data. Based on the observation, the researcher makes analysis of the collected data and reflects to what happened and concludes the result of the implemented action. Then, the researcher makes decision to what should he do based on the result of reflection. Whether he is successful and then he stops the cycle, or unsuccessful then he revises the plan and continues the next cycle. The researcher conducts the research by collaborating with a lecturer. The researcher will act as a tutor and analyst. He will plan, carry out the implementation of the research in the classroom, observe and analyze the result of the implementation of the teaching strategy as well. On the other hand, the lecturer as the collaborator will involve in the research as a consultant in planning and observing about anything happens during the implementation of the research. It is to know whether the implementation is in line with the planning of research or not.
This study has two main research procedures; they are preliminary study and research cycle. Preliminary study is to identify and define the real problems occurred in class. As stated in the early pages, most students were not eager to study pronunciation. Most of them
neglected the important of pronunciation symbols that represent the spoken word in dictionaries. They, then, got unsatisfactory mark of pronunciation class. Henceforth, the most crucial problem in this class is the motivation of the students.
Based on the preliminary study above, the criteria of success of this study is the improvement of motivation on learning pronunciation that is most students of the class are motivated to learn pronunciation by using peer- assessment on reading aloud. Further, it must be also supported with the result of questionnaires computation that shows supportive results on incorporating peer- assessment on reading aloud to improve the students’ motivation on pronunciation class.
As the problems, the objectives, and the criteria of success of this research have been obviously identified and set up, the following steps of an action research cycle will be done in order to solve the problems and achieve the target of the research.
Planning
In this step, by collaborating with the collaborator, the researcher will design strategies on developing peer- assessment on reading aloud to motivate the students in teaching and learning pronunciation and some preparations for the action. The researcher will design lesson plans to do in teaching and learning pronunciation in the class, such as selecting the peer-assessment
strategies to apply whether in pairs, small groups, class orientations, and or all of them and the way how to give response or feedback to the readers’ reading aloud performances (whether giving direct/oral response for mispronounced words at the time when the reader pronounces incorrectly or indirect/written response after the reader has finished reading all the texts, and or both of them); select kind of the texts to be read out loud in peer-assessment strategies (whether short narrative texts, recount texts, poems/poetries, tongue twister/chant, minimal pair, quotations, lyrics, etc.); then, arrangethe steps of teaching and learning process; the teaching and learning process is started by deepening understanding on pronunciation theories, practicing how to implement strategy, then it will be continued by elevating the students’ motivation on pronunciation class through employing the strategy to whole members of class, and by the end of the teaching and learning process, the researcher will give questionnaires to all subjects of this study to explore the students’ perception and opinions toward the implemented strategy being investigated.
Further, the researcher will get ready for some instruments concerning with making observation sheets, field notes, and questionnaires. An observation sheet is to observe the researcher’s activities during
the teaching learning process whether the teaching and learning is already in line with the lesson plan made before or not (it is done by the observer). In addition, a field note is to record any important events concerning with the students’ performances in the classroom during the implementation of teaching strategy. Further, questionnaires help the researcher to explore the students’
perception and opinions toward the topic being investigated. This instrument can be in the forms of statements for the students to respond. By providing access to what is
“inside a person’s head,” questionnaires allow investigators to measure what someone knows (knowledge or information), what someone likes and dislikes (values and preferences), and what someone thinks (attitudes and benefits) (Tuckman, 1999:237).
Acting
In this step, the researcher will be a practitioner who teaches pronunciation theories, conducts the research strategy, and takes notes to record anything happens in teaching and learning process as has been planned before in the planning step.
Meanwhile, the collaborator will observe the researcher’s activities during the teaching and learning process whether the implementation of strategy is already in line with the planning made before or not.
The acting or implementation of this research will take several meetings; they
are for deepening understanding on International Phonetic alphabets (IPA), main features of pronunciation (phonemes and suprasegmental features), transcriptions, and the use of pronunciation dictionaries; for practicing how to implement the strategy; for implementing the strategy; for doing peer-assessment to whole members of class on selected peer activities and selected texts to read aloud and giving responses/feedbacks to the reader’ performance and as well as students themselves, and one last meeting is for giving questionnaires to all subjects of study in one cycle.
Observing
Observation is the process of recording and collecting the data about aspects that lead to successfulness or unsuccessfulness of the implemented strategy toward the criteria of success of this research. This step will be done during the implementation of the strategy to the students in the class. In this phase, the researcher will use field notes to record any important events concerning with the students’ activities, performance, attitude or behavior toward the implemented strategy in class. By using observation sheets, the collaborator will observe the researcher’s activities during the teaching learning process whether the implementation of strategy is already in line with the planning made before or not. By the end of the
implementation of the strategy, the researcher will give questionnaires to explore the students’ perception and opinions toward the implemented strategy being investigated.
Reflecting
This phase is to analyze the collected data in the previous phase, reflect and decide whether the result of the collected data are successful to achieve the criteria of success, are able to answer the research problems, and are able to achieve the objective of the research then the cycle will stop or the contrary, revise the plan and continue into the next cycle based on drawbacks found.
In analyzing the collected data, the researcher will use the technique of analysis the data as follows: the data of field notes in the form of description about situation of the class during the implementation of peer- assessment on reading aloud including students’ performances or attitude and classroom atmosphere and the data of the questionnaires. They both will be analyzed qualitatively. A set of questionnaire in the form of Likert scale requiring the respondents’ responses in terms of the perception and or opinions are constructed.
The responses will be in the form of statements related to supportive ideas and or opinions (Riduwan, 2008:12) on the implementation of peer-assessment on reading aloud in learning pronunciation as
reflected in five categories of responses, they are: Strongly Agree (SA), Agree (A), Neutral (N), Disagree (D), and Strongly Disagree (SD).
FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS
This study was carried out successfully in one cycle and the descriptions of the findings in each step are presented separately to show the development of the implemented strategy toward the existing problem as follows:
Planning
In this step, by collaborating with the collaborator, the researcher had done two major activities; they are designing strategies on developing peer- assessment on reading aloud to motivate the students in teaching and learning pronunciation and designing instruments needed toward criteria of success.
On the first activity, the researcher had designed lesson plans on teaching and learning pronunciation in class, such as selecting the peer-assessment strategies to apply whether in pair, small group, class orientation, and or all of them and the way how to give response or feedback to the readers’ reading aloud performances (giving direct/oral response for mispronounced words at the time when the reader pronounces incorrectly and indirect/written response after the reader has finished reading all the texts, and both
of them); selecting kind of texts to be read out loud in peer-assessment strategy (short narrative texts, recount texts, poems/poetries, and news); arranging steps of teaching and learning process: the teaching and learning process would be started by deepening understanding on pronunciation theories, practicing how to implement the strategy to use, then it would have been followed by elevating the students’ motivation on pronunciation class through employing the strategy to the whole members of class, just by the end of the teaching and learning process, the researcher would have given questionnaires to all subjects of the study to explore their perception and opinions toward the implemented strategy being investigated.
Meanwhile, on the second activity, the researcher had prepared some instruments in correlation with making observation sheets, field notes, and questionnaires. Observation sheet was to observe the researcher’s activities during the teaching learning process whether the teaching and learning was already in line with the lesson plan made before or not (it would have been done by the observer).
Further, field note was to record any important events concerning with the students’ performances in the classroom during the implementation of teaching strategy. Then, questionnaires were designed such that way to explore the
students’ perception and opinions toward the topic being investigated.
Acting
There are seven meetings in the implementation of the strategy. Meeting 1 was done to deepen the students' mastery on differentiating sounds of English including the importance of pronunciation, the International Phonetic Alphabets and the main features of pronunciation (consonants, vowels, and diphthongs sounds, stress and intonation), comparing sounds in minimal pairs, transcribing words, and learning how to use phonetic symbols on English dictionaries. From the beginning to the end of the lesson, the researcher acted as a tutor who taught all the material, incorporated listening and repeating activities, and corrected mispronouncing words made by the students. Meanwhile, the collaborator observed the researcher’s activities whether they were already in line with the lesson plan or not.
Then, meeting 2 was done to give further practices to the students in groups and individually including classifying sound of words into their symbol of sounds in IPA, pronouncing words in minimal pairs, and analyzing transcribed words. The researcher acted as a tutor and analyst who taught all the material and corrected mispronouncing words. The collaborator observed the researcher’s activities whether
they were already in line with the lesson plan or not.
Further, meeting 3 was done to practice the incorporating peer-assessment of reading aloud in class. The researcher explained what peer-assessment of reading aloud is and how to apply it. Next, he explained about what recount text is (the text that was going to read out aloud) and the past verbs and pronunciation of past endings. After that, he paired the students and distributed a recount text and started practicing in pairs. As soon as the peer- assessment of reading aloud in pairs was done, the researcher grouped the students, distributed another recount text to be read aloud, and started peer-assessment of reading aloud in groups until the end of the lesson. The collaborator observed the researcher activities as he did in the previous meeting.
Additionally, meeting 4 was the real strategy of the implementation of the peer- assessment of reading aloud to improve students’ motivation on learning pronunciation. Firstly, the researcher tried to dig the students’ prior knowledge toward the text to read out aloud, i.e. poetry. Then, he explained what poetry is, gave students examples how to recite it with correct pronunciations, and asked the students to listen and repeat. Then, he paired the students, distributed a text of poetry to read aloud, gave them time to study the text, and
started peering-assessment of reading aloud in pairs. As soon as the peer-assessment of reading aloud in pairs was done, the researcher grouped the students, distributed another text of poetry to be read aloud and started peering-assessment in groups. While the students were doing all peer-assessment of reading aloud, the researcher was taking notes about anything happens during the implementation of the strategy.The collaborator observed the researcher activities as he did in the previous meeting.
Next, meeting 5 was the same as meeting 4 with a different activity. In this meeting, there will be an individual peer- assessment of reading aloud. The researcher set each students free to choose a text they like to read aloud (whether a poetry, a story, or news), then he distributed the texts, and started peering-assessment of reading aloud in class orientation (whole member of the class assessed each students pronunciation performance at the same time). While the students did peering- assessment of reading aloud in turns, the researcher was taking notes about anything happens during the implementation. The collaborator observed the researcher activities as he did in the previous meeting.
In addition, meeting 6 was to continue the previous meeting since it was only able to finish one third of the whole students in class. The activity from the beginning to the end of the lesson was just
continuing incorporating peer-assessment of reading aloud in class orientation (whole member of the class assessed each student’s pronunciation performance at the same time).While the students did peering- assessment of reading aloud in turns, the researcher was taking notes about anything happens during the implementation. The collaborator observed the researcher activities as he did in the previous meeting.
Finally, meeting 7 was done to explore the students’ perception or opinions toward the implementation of peer- assessment of reading aloud to improve students’ motivation on learning pronunciation by giving students questionnaires. The researcher set the students free to express their own feeling toward items on the questionnaires in five statements (strongly agree statement, agree statement, neutral statement, disagree statement, and strongly disagree statement) that best expressing to their own feeling.
Observing
This step is to collect the data toward the criteria of success of classroom action research and it is done at the same time with acting step. In this phase, the researcher used field notes to record important events concerning with the students’ activities, performance, attitude or behavior toward the implemented strategy from meeting to meeting especially the meeting of the real implementation of the
strategy (meeting 4, 5, and 6). Focusing on the use of the field notes to observe and note the students’ performances, the researcher emphasized the observation on the performance indicators of the motivated language learners such as; whether they respected to pronunciation acquisition, made effort to the goal of learning pronunciation, liked to sustain the peer- assessment activity to acquire pronunciation mastery, tried to pursue the activity, and connected favorable feeling to activity to acquire pronunciation mastery or not. The collaborator observed the researcher’s activities from meeting to meeting whether the implementation of strategy was already in line with the planning or not. Then, by the end of the implementation of the strategy, the researcher gave questionnaires to the students to explore their perception and opinions toward the implemented strategy.
The questionnaire consisted of 15 items for the students to answer freely based on their best feeling whether they strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, and strongly disagree to them. It was so important since the result of the questionnaires was to determine the successfulness or unsuccessfulness of the study.
Reflecting
In this step, the researcher analyzed the collected data in the previous step (acting and observing) and decided whether
the result of analyzed data is successful to achieve the criteria of success, able to answer the research problem, and able to achieve the objective of research then stop, or the contrary, then revise the plan and continue into the next cycle based on the drawbacks found.
The collected data in the form of description about situation of the class during the implementation of peer- assessment on reading aloud including students’ performances or attitudes and classroom atmosphere were analyzed qualitatively.Meanwhile, the collected data in the form of questionnaires of the students’ perceptions toward the implemented strategy, motivation, and pronunciation were analyzed quantitatively by incorporating questionnaires analysis of Likert scale computation.
Henceforth, the field notes of meeting 4, 5, and 6 resulted supportive descriptions toward the criteria of success of the study that qualitatively indicated improvement of students’ motivation on learning pronunciation. Most of the students were motivated to learn pronunciation by using peer-assessment of reading aloud. It is better than on the preliminary study that it indicated a few students are motivated to learn pronunciation.
To explain further, the field notes of meeting 4, 5, and 6 showed students’ good
respect on pronunciation acquisition and mastery by showing good attention to the activities during the teaching and learning process; made hard effort to the goal of learning pronunciation by studying pronunciation theories and checking up the right phonetic symbols in dictionaries to get the correctness to pronounce words;
sustained activities to acquire pronunciation mastery by repeating and continuing the activities of peering to others’
pronunciation performance and drilling by their own to master the correct pronunciation; tried to pursue activities to acquire pronunciation mastery by following the peer-assessment on reading aloud activities attentively; and connected their favorable feeling to peer-assessment activities to acquire pronunciation mastery by showing good mood, smiles, unstressed feelings, and comfortable conditions; not under pressure and boredom.
And most importantly, the findings of the field notes of meeting 4, 5, and 6 in incorporating peer-assessment that assessed students’ pronunciation performances by reading texts aloud including giving responses or feedback to others’
performances in pairs, small groups, and class orientation resulted a good washback.
The effect of peer-assessment on reading aloud such that way led the students to be intrinsically motivated to study pronunciation better, to have the feeling of
the contents, proud competence and self- determination inside themselves when they made no mispronounced words. The field notes also recorded that the incorporating peer-assessment in a larger number of students (in class orientation) effected better washback than in a less number of students (in pairs or in small groups). The students were intrinsically motivated to get themselves ready prior to the assessment.
The findings, then, also showed that the incorporation of peer-assessment on reading aloud gave special benefits to the students such as encouraged reflective learning through observing others’
pronunciation performance, raising awareness of their own pronunciation performance, developing their critical thought, enhancing their social relationships among students in the class, generating sharing and discussing responsibility among the students, and having students self-regulated learning.
In addition, the findings of the questionnaires gave the result of total score, which is 2012. It means that the score is on the range between point 1631 (support) and almost reach point 2016 (strongly support) in the continuum diagram for the score interpretation. It could be concluded that the peer-assessment on reading aloud to improve the students’ motivation on learning pronunciation had supportive response from the students. Most of them
stated strong agreement to the items of the questionnaires and it adequately achieved the criteria of success. Moreover, the findings of the questionnaires toward the students’ opinions also proved that reading aloud is useful in teaching and learning pronunciation. It is the easiest access to check one’s pronunciation mastery. The questionnaires proved that the students are more motivated to read interesting texts such poetry, stories, etc.
Hence, peer-assessment of reading aloud is a very good teaching tool or strategy to enhance students’ motivation on learning pronunciation. It gives better washback (no neglectfulness), and awareness to individual competence and performance as well. It is interesting, challenging, motivating, and reflecting activity.It gives chances to students to have higher reasoning and critical thought, and facilities to socialize and to share responsibilities among students. The discussions of the findings on this research are highlighted in the following table.
Table 2.
Result of Incorporating Peer- Assessment of Reading Aloud toward
Motivation on Learning Pronunciation
The use of
Discussions
Showed a great washback since it led students to be intrinsically motivated to study pronunciation better, to have the feeling of content, proud competence and self- determination.
Provided special benefits to
peer- assessment of reading aloud toward motivation on learning pronunciati on
the students such; encouraged reflective learning through observing the others’
pronunciation performance, raised awareness of their own pronunciation performance, developed their critical thought, enhanced their social relationships among students in the class, generated sharing and discussing responsibility among the students, and had students self-regulated learning.
Supplied many advantages to the students for the study of the links between spelling and pronunciation, of stress and intonation, and of sound between words in connected speech; all of these can be highlighted and investigated further in fun and interesting ways through reading aloud (poetry, story etc.)
Had supportive responses from the students on the result of questionnaires. Most of them stated strong agreement to the items of the questionnaires and it adequately achieved the criteria of success. The total score is 2012. It means that it is on the range between point 1631 (support) and nearly reach point 2016 (strongly support) in the continuum diagram for the score interpretation.
Accordingly, the findings of incorporating peer-assessment of reading aloud are beneficial to discuss further toward teaching learning pronunciation especially to boost up students’ motivation. As mentioned in the table above, a conclusion holds true that it is noteworthy that peer- assessment makes students have eagerness on learning pronunciation by showing motivated learners’ performances in pre, during, and after class performances. In
pre-class performance the students are well- prepared to perform pronunciation better by having self regulated learning. Meanwhile, during the class performance, the students are eyeing other students’ pronunciation performance and getting reflective learning that is necessary for them and the performer. Then, after the class performance, the washback plays its role that the students get motivation to study pronunciation better, to have the feeling of content, proud competence and self- determination toward pronunciation acquisition.
Given the research findings and discussions, this study which is aimed at describing the way how the peer- assessment on reading aloud to be developed to improve the students’
motivation on pronunciation practice class, was empirically stopped.
CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS Regarding the findings of this classroom action research, hence, the researcher made a conclusion as follows:
the findings of this action research in one cycle was able to answer the research problem and achieve the objective of the study, which says, “The use of peer- assessment in pairs, groups, and larger number of students of reading aloud by selecting interesting texts can improve the English department students’ motivation on
pronunciation class of STKIP-PGRI Trenggalek”.
Then, the success of the incorporating peer-assessment of reading aloud in pairs(two persons), groups (five up to ten persons), and larger number of students (ten persons, class orientation or more) in similar status is basically similar in the process . In the classroom teaching and learning activity, the successful process of peer-assessment of reading aloud is simply begun by pairing, grouping, or including all students in class to assessing each other’ pronunciation performance and selecting texts to be read aloud (short stories, poetries, chants, minimal pairs etc.).
Soon as those activities are done, the process of peer-assessment is continued with distributing texts, understanding the criteria of assessment (well-pronounced or mispronounced), understanding the way how to give the feedbacks (directly (orally) or indirectly (written)), studying the texts, peering all members’ pronunciation performance as well as themselves by taking turn one by one reading a selected text aloud, and giving their assessmnent result on mispronounced words as feedbacks. As the whole students are already assessed, the process of peer- assessment of reading aloud is finished.
In addition, the researcher concluded that the number of students assessing one’s pronunciation performances
and the text selections in the peer assessment of reading aloud activities play a great role toward the students’ motivation on learning pronunciation. The larger number of the students included to assess one’ pronunciation performance, the better washback resulted and the more motivated he/she is. The more interesting texts, the more motivated students to read and to study the texts then read it out aloud.
In line with some conclusions of incorporating peer-assessment made based on the findings of this research, Mrudula Patri City University of Hong Kong 2002states that when assessment criteria are firmly set, peer-feedback enables students to judge the performance of their peers in a manner comparable to those of the teachers.
However, the same is not found to be true with self-assessment. Meanwhile, Winnie Cheng and Martin Warren the Hong Kong Polytechnic University 2005 argue that the findings of their research suggest that students had a less positive attitude towards assessing their peers’ language proficiency, but they did not score their peers’ language proficiency very differently from the other assessment criteria. Then, Hidetoshi Saito Ibaraki University, Japan 2008, by his study on correlation study, he finds that peer- assessment is a robust system in which instruction on skill aspects may suffice to achieve a certain level of correlation with the criterion variable(instructor), but
training may enhance student comments and reduce misfitting raters.
After all, since the use of peer- assessment of reading aloud can improve the English department students’
motivation on pronunciation class, some recommendations are proposed dealing with the following people. It is suggestive for the government to set pronunciation in the curriculum particularly about primary and secondary level since the researcher had proved that the pronunciation was neglected and as the importance of pronunciation. Further, it is important to consider that peer-assessment can be a legal assessment and acknowledged acceptance to apply in daily teaching and learning outcomes. For teachers, it is suggestive for them to stimulate students’ motivation.
They are better to have a good grounding in theoretical knowledge, practical classroom skill, and access to a good idea for any others classroom activities as the trigger to motivate students. But, it is should also be realized that there is no best single method or technique in teaching and learning activities in the classroom for overall teaching language’s skills or components . Every method and technique has its own strengths and weaknesses. Too much drilling, repeating activities and assessments such peer-assessment of reading aloud will cause boredom.
Teaching pronunciation by using peer-
assessment of reading aloud is highly recommended as one of classroom activities. For students; some people say that language is a habit. We cannot master a language instantly. Therefore, the students are supposed to have their own self- regulated learning, get motivated on doing that, and drill themselves so often.
Meanwhile, peer-assessment of reading aloud offers a huge opportunity for students to have their own self-regulated learning, get motivated on doing that, and be used to drill themselves since it is a flexible activity that can be done with or without teachers, inside or outside the classroom, and in pair, in group, or in larger number of peers as long as the peer/peers are aware of assessment criteria. For the next researchers, it is suggestive for themwho would like to use the research findings as an information or a reference to conduct the research with the similar topic or different topic such motivation in reading, speaking, or any other language skills or components by incorporating peer-assessment of reading aloud in the same or different research design especially to elevate quality of English language education.
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